Law of Entropy

I understand the law of entropy. Okay, I really don’t. But it has to do with statistical thermodynamics, which I don’t understand either. But for the sake of this post, I’m defining entropy as “things moving to a state of disorder.” I see this every day in my life, particularly with regards to my house. Everything is always getting messy.

Here’s the thing. Some scientist needs to figure out why every day is not equally entropic. For example, Saturday is my clean-the-house-day. By Saturday evening, everything is dusted, cleaned, mopped, vacuumed, etc. Assuming “normal” entropy, things should be normally messy. But this isn’t what happens. By Monday morning, it looks like a tornado has plowed through the house. What happened? Do gnomes, trolls, or evil fairies slip out of their homes in the wood work?

I suspect it is the children. I think that after Cal and I fall asleep, all the kids get up and have a party. (This is what Jacob used to think we did after we got him to bed—he thought we watched movies, ate chocolate and ice cream, and did a happy dance. Reality hit when he was old enough to stay up late. He couldn’t believe that we don’t do anything but collapse. Apparently, we are very boring people.) At any rate, I’m sure the children do get up. This would explain why I find stacks of dirty dishes and why I can hardly get the children up on Monday morning. It would explain comic books all over the table and socks on the floor—they’re the ones doing the happy dance.

So I guess we don’t have a variance in the law of entropy that occurs only in our house. Physicists don’t need to stop by. I’d stay up late to catch them, but I’ve already collapsed by then.